ANTI SOCIAL BABOONS

**Note to self:
If I'm ever visiting Knowsley Safari Park near Liverpool, England and have a rooftop carrier, AVOID THE BABOON AREA!!


I can't stop laughing at this story and these pics!

Our baboons have been issued with Anti Social Baboon Orders after discovering a technique to open car roofboxes and have been making the most of the extra "playthings" they can find inside them.

To demonstrate this behaviour staff at the park sent through a car with a roof box that they had filled themselves the result of which can be seen in the picture.

Visitors to the park are advised not to go through the baboon section but take the car friendly route if their car is fitted with a roofbox.

-- Knowsley Park News

ht: Pegalicious!!

LANCELOT LINK

Pegalicious, a coworker, couldn't believe that I wasn't familiar with Lancelot Link. But I quickly remembered that she's my elder (which is why I give her so much respect). After investigating, I discovered that I was only 2 years old when it went off the air! And I don't think I did much TV-watching prior to that.

Of course, since monkeys were involved, I had to do a little more research.
Here are a few notes:

• live-action film series featured a cast of chimpanzees (Can it get any better?)
• speaking roles were overdubbed with human voices (Really?)
  
• network episodes added a laugh track; later syndicated and video versions do not (I'm shocked they'd even need a track!)
  
• plots featured Lancelot Link and his female colleague Mata Hairi in secret agent and spy satires (Her voice kinda makes me cringe.)
  
• Link worked for APE (Agency to Prevent Evil), engaged in an ongoing conflict with the evil organization CHUMP (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) (Who comes up with this stuff?)
  
• regular weekly feature was chimp TV host "Ed Simian" introducing a musical number by an all-chimp band. (Now that is right up my alley!)
  
• most expensive Saturday morning children's' show to that time, with location filming, props and costumes, and the laborious staging and training of the animals (Is it hard to get chimps to work?)

Anybody else out there remember it? In case you are intrigued, have a lot of time on your hands, need a good laugh, or want to make fun of something, I've included two clips below. The first one is of the all-chimp band, The Evolution Revolution. The second is an actual Lancelot episode. Warning: once you start it, you won't be able to turn away!

FAIR SKINNED

20 Animals In Desperate Need Of A Tanning Salon

This, of course, was the cutest picture. But you can check out the others!

MONKEY DAY

Some good friends of ours kidnapped me on Saturday morning! Mr. Ginger knew the plan, but managed to not leak the surprise. As we neared our destination, they gave me a Monkey Day card. (They've declared that from this year on, the Saturday before Mother's Day is Monkey Day...sounds good to me!) We then arrived at my surprise.

Now if you've been following PoMonkey since it's inception (October 2005), you'll be familiar with our destination. I finally made it to CHIMP HAVEN!!! My 4th blog post was about this retirement home for chimps. What a great surprise!

Several times a year they have Discovery Days when visitors are allowed to enter the habitat and see the chimps. And it finally happened on a day we were in town. There are 103 chimps, and we probably saw about half of them. And we saw Tracy, the baby that was born even after all the males had vasectomies. Oops! The only thing that separated us from all of the chimps was a moat. Apparently, chimps can't swim...who knew?!?!

Mr. Ginger took this very vocal video of several chimps protecting their bucket of fruit! It was a great morning, and fun to watch all my chimp friends.

BILLY and KIKO

Have you seen this yet? It's so cute. The doggy kinda looks like our Bailey.

When severe flood waters hit northern Mozambique in 2002, causing misery and extensive damage to property and crops, many animals were left to fend for themselves. But villagers in Caia witnessed a bizarre friendship between a dog and a monkey.

A skinny dog emerged from the bush with a tiny monkey clinging to its back.

ht - Mr. G

BET YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THIS

Minda Loo Hoo shared with me today that she heard the following traffic report on the radio today on her way to work (remember, she lives in Singapore):

"Caution on the PIE (expressway), dead
monkey in middle of road, causing back up."

Bet you haven't heard that one before! I sure hope it's not one of my friends.

OOPS!

Have you been hiding under a rock and missed the latest monkey news?? And I'm not just talking local news, but this one made national news. (Several of you emailed me about this one to make sure I was paying attention...thanks!)

In a previous post I shared with you about Chimp Haven located in Louisiana, not far from where I lived for many years. When retired boy chimpanzees arrive at Chimp Haven, they are all given a vasectomy. But on January 17, one of the girly chimps gave birth!! Oops! And paternity tests have begun. "Workers have started collecting hair samples from the chimps for testing. Once they identify the father, it's back to the operating room for him."

BALD IS CUTE

You CANNOT tell me that this chimp isn't a cutie!!

This is Cinder, a resident at the St. Louis Zoo. When Cinder was 5 months old, ALL of her hair fell out. The veterinarians discovered that she had an autoimmune problem that causes her body's defense system to prevent hair growth. It's called (can you guess?) alopecia universalis. Other than that, she's perfectly healthy. The zookeepers say that the "other chimps don't seem to care about her baldness, and treat her no differently than they would if she had hair." That's really good to know.